Carl Cannon: Lawyer pays price for his cop-killer client

Debo Adegbile, litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, outside the Supreme Court in Washington, April 29, 2009. Seven Senate Democrats joined Republicans March 5 to reject Adegbile's nomination by President Barack Obama to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. NEW YORK TIMES PHOTO

The U.S. Senate handed President Obama a staggering defeat Wednesday in rejecting Debo Adegbile, his choice to head the Justice Department's civil rights division. The main complaint against Adegbile is that, as an NAACP official, he prepared legal briefs in the appeal of a convicted cop-killer named Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Vice President Joe Biden had been sent to Capitol Hill in case the vote was tied, but he wasn't needed. The margin was 52-47, as eight Democrats joined a unanimous Republican Party in opposition. (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed his vote from yea to nay, a procedural move that allows him to bring the nomination up again.) A chagrined Obama called it “a travesty based on wildly unfair character attacks.”

The president is right to be incensed. Not because of any misbegotten idea that Abu-Jamal was railroaded, which isn't true no matter what your favorite Hollywood liberal might say, but because the right to counsel is one of the most basic American freedoms.

As a young reporter, I learned that innocent people are occasionally convicted of serious felonies, including capital murder. I uncovered four such cases before I was 30 years old – and wasn't looking for any of them.

So, yes, such injustices occur, but not to Mumia Abu-Jamal. The conviction of the U.S. prison system's most famous cause célèbre isn't legitimately in dispute. The puzzling aspect of this case is how any sentient human being could believe that he's innocent – and why we're still arguing about it 32 years later.

Mumia, as he is known the world over, was once a member of the Black Panther Party and a reporter for a Philadelphia radio station, WHYY, who gravitated to radical causes. In late 1981, he drifted out of journalism and began driving a cab.

He was arrested about 4 a.m. on Dec. 9, 1981, while slumped on a street corner with a bullet wound in his abdomen. Ballistics showed his wound came from the gun of a Philadelphia policeman named Daniel Faulkner, lying a few feet away. The officer had been shot in the back and four more times while lying on the ground.

Mumia owned a gun of the same caliber as the murder weapon. He was reaching for it when a responding patrolman stopped him. Five shots had been fired from his weapon. Eyewitnesses placed Mumia in the middle of the shootout. One saw him standing over Faulkner's prone body, firing.

Minutes earlier, Faulkner, 25 years old and married less than a year, had radioed that he was pulling over a Volkswagen Beetle. The car was driven by a man named William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother. Cook later pleaded guilty to assaulting Faulkner, who was subduing him with a baton when Abu-Jamal rushed over from his taxi with his .38 revolver.

At the hospital, security guard Priscilla Durham overheard Abu-Jamal say, “I shot the mother------ and I hope the mother------ dies.” She reported this to hospital authorities and testified to it in court.

He was convicted and sentenced to death, but as the case wound through the appeals courts, Mumia rediscovered his interest in journalism and began publishing articles and books criticizing the criminal justice system. Eventually, he was adopted as a pet by the usual coterie of beautiful people.

At some point, the “Free Mumia” rallies and T-shirts and books and articles and documentaries – all replete with factual errors and lies – became too much for some. One fellow leftist, former prison volunteer Philip Bloch, expressing “disgust” with the excesses of Abu-Jamal's supporters, filed a deposition revealing that the convicted man had admitted he'd shot Faulkner.

But the lion's share of the outrage was felt, understandably, by Danny Faulkner's widow, Maureen. And with help from the Fraternal Order of Police, she fought back. The culture wars were joined.

That is what brought the Capitol to its disheartening moral nadir last week. Liberal Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, said the Senate had descended to its lowest level in the 30 years he's been a member. There's a lot of competition.

Harry Reid claimed those voting against Debo Adegbile's confirmation wanted to suppress the black vote. Reid essentially accused seven fellow Democrats of cravenness – and every Republican senator of being a racist. That's typical fare for Reid, who earlier in the week described wealthy conservative donors David H. Koch and his brother Charles as “un-American” for contributing to political causes that benefit them.

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